Engaging Ideas - 6/2/2017

Every week we curate stories and reports on complex issues. This week: Finding common ground through video chat. Political foes go on a blind date in the UK. Even doctors struggle to estimate cost of care. The importance of community colleges and what some states are doing to help. And fighting inequality in the K-12 system.

Democracy

How Twitter Is Being Gamed to Feed
Misinformation (The New
York Times)Twitter’s design also promotes a
slavish devotion to metrics: Every tweet comes with a counter of Likes and
Retweets, and users come to internalize these metrics as proxies for real-world
popularity. Yet these metrics can be gamed. Because a single Twitter user can
create lots of accounts and run them all in a coordinated way, Twitter lets
relatively small groups masquerade as far larger ones. If Facebook’s primary
danger is its dissemination of fake stories, then Twitter’s is a ginning up of
fake people.

We, the people, must demand civility
from our politicians
(The Hill)We all know that the bitter,
vicious turn politics has taken isn’t going to change until we demand it.
Reasoned discussion, which can occasionally lead to raised voices, is part of
living in a democracy. But we must hold the people seeking our votes to the
highest of standards and make them act like the leaders they claim to be or
refuse them the job they seek by not giving them our votes.

Education Today (RealClearEducation Newsletter)As a new and highly consequential
case moves toward the Supreme Court, teachers' unions are bracing for some
dramatic changes. Mike Antonucci of The 74 examines how teachers' unions are
preparing to lose thousands of members. And if you want to get into the weeds
of ESSA, Matthew Di Carlo takes a deep dive into how states can improve accountability
measurements in their ESSA implementation plans.

Our Schools Have an Equity Problem. What
Should We Do About It?
(Education Week)Just as our federal education laws
have changed and evolved, so too have our nation's demographics. It is
significant that the federal role is downsized just as economic inequality is
at its highest and mobility from poverty is at its lowest since the ESEA was
enacted.

A Bipartisan Approach to School Funding
Boosts Equity
(Education Week)When Nevada's Republican governor,
Brian Sandoval, was re-elected in 2014, the GOP won majorities in both houses
of the legislature for the first time in 85 years. In 2015, the governor bucked
party orthodoxy and crossed the political divide to broaden the tax base and
fund his education initiatives. These initiatives include boosting early
education and attending to the state's depleted teacher ranks. As a result,
funding for specific pre-K-12 programs will more than double, to $1.3 billion,
during his eight-year tenure, which ends in 2019.

Higher Education & Workforce Development

On Second Thought: U.S. Adults Reflect
on Their Education Decisions (Gallup-Strada Education Network)This report -- the first of a
three-year series that will explore individuals' perceptions of their education
paths -- provides initial insights and sets a foundation to help students most
effectively and efficiently achieve their economic and personal goals. This
first look focuses on three key questions asked of U.S. adults who previously
enrolled in or completed postsecondary education or training.

The Case for Community College (Time)Without a particular career in
mind, Anderson enrolled at Lake Area Technical Institute (LATI) in Watertown,
S.D., a relatively inexpensive two-year college 30 minutes from his home.
There, his classrooms were hangar-size spaces filled with wind turbines, solar
panels, ethanol distillers and miniature hydroelectric dams. It seemed more
like his dad's garage, where Anderson would spend hours tinkering with his 1971
Chevrolet pickup truck, than a place to learn math. But trigonometry began making
sense when you used it to fit together piping systems. Basic computer code
seemed worth learning when you could program an assembly-line robot.

Mass. Gov and Boston Mayor Announce
Tuition-Free College Pilot Program (AP)In an era of increased political
polarization, here's a noteworthy story out of Massachusetts: Republican
Governor Charlie Baker and Marty Walsh, the Democratic Mayor of Boston, have
joined together to launch a tuition-free college program for low-income
students in Boston. The Boston Bridge program will commence for 2017 high
school graduates. To qualify, students must meet the federal Pell Grant income
standards and then enroll full time at Bunker Hill Community College, Roxbury
Community College or Mass Bay Community College. According to the AP, "The
students will be required to complete their associates’ degrees within two and
a half years before transferring to state public colleges or state
universities."

Health Care

Few Clinicians Accurately Estimate Costs
of Emergency Care (American
Journal of Managed Care)Healthcare professionals working
in the emergency department may be unaware of the costs of the care they
deliver, according to a new study that asked clinicians to guess the cost of 3
hypothetical visits.